


The Hero Quest of the Science-Messiah

by Sab



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), Allusions to Everything, F/M, First X-Files Fic, Stream of Consciousness, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-10-12
Updated: 1999-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like the dutiful student, crushing on the piano teacher, practicing scales up, down, he was perfecting his strength. (Uploaded by Punk, from Gossamer.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hero Quest of the Science-Messiah

**Author's Note:**

> An ongoing fable chronicling Mulder and Scully's relationship across the six seasons. Aka a paramasturbatory effort on my part to get out my perspectives on how their relationship unfolded. :)

In a bell-tolling moment of reckoning, two from alone perspectives - faith of faith, faith of science (blind alone faith of promised inevitability) - two in the moment met Truth. They met on demand. Circumstance, uninvited, invited the two to truth, together. Heads butting fury they rode in collision: she on foot of deskless body knew bodies, knew the magic method DNA equation of plausible, he, the wielding pursuer knew the unabashed, unembarrassed faith-truth of never-always, the shadow ghost of his own absolute possible. And he knew what he needed. Some value to attach to reason non-being, some credible eyes (what incredible eyes!) of lens to mirror.

"Look," he says. "Believe." He is gaunt, she recognizes. Hollow, empty, but behind him fire breathes. Licks of fire consume his own dear life oxygen, his dying breath words. "Look," he says. "Believe."

[I want to believe.]

She is suspicious; he is suspect. She bites her lip. She counts ceiling tiles. She counts ideas. She tallies the countable, catalogs. He is relentless. Perhaps it is not this moment, but a soon one that the final goodbye flag is raised. Not this moment but a soon one she will recognize more in his eyes, she knows she can fill the hollow there. He the question, elusive, she the vocabulary with which to utter it. Not in this moment, but soon. Soon the last goodbye flag, and the choice is made.

["Agent Mulder. I'm Dana Scully. I've been assigned to work with you."]

"So tell me about him," tongue-clucking hen-friends sit her down for wine. "He's cute," she says. "He's crazy." "Be careful," they warn her. She warns herself. His reputation has long preceded him, darkly basemented tucked away "nobody here but the FBI's most unwanted!" "Spooky Mulder whose sister was abducted by aliens and spends his life chasing after little green men with a badge and a gun." "So, tell me about him!" friends are more eager now, noting her time more passing consumed by this unspoken crazy. She's left her answering machine on. She does not know what to say.

["No, I, uh, I even made my parents call me Mulder."]

He's left his answering machine on, digital voice responding to a world that hail-calls unignorable. The "hey, you!" of technoscience from all his past reaching out fiberoptic speed-dial glowing memory. Memory-button cellular phone memory. Now she is first. At what point was that, did he allow her to slip in superpriority? Too soon. Too early immediate did he let her become Her, that echo different response in a familiar voice to the cavernous "helloooo?" He's naked now, exposed, too used to calling out his own unanswered hail, cry of loss into nowhereness, too comfortably couched/un-bedded in singular vanity. Too comfortable with a "hello" answer "hello," with an echo in his own timbre, his own calling hailing voice. Shy, he's naked now, calls out just to test.

"Helloooo?"

From astonishingly grounded truth unrealized comes the shocking reply.

["Mulder, it's me."]

There are puzzles for solving, and this is fun. For her finally a challenge to that capacious brain, the do-gooder of law and order, the poster-child for justice finding our lady unjust. With the tremulous ease of strapping on a helmet, straddling the motorcycle in impractical shoes she speeds off with bugs in her teeth. Salty. She counts metaphor, tallies potential templates, science-showing reason/excuses to describe what her life has become. It's making sense, now. Place. Him. Job. Justice. Together matching in familiar dimensions, fitting applicable models. Easily referenced. Not even nervous of a history unaccustomed to its match she plans, she anticipates suspect. Ah. I get it. This is how it will be. Between us. Challenged to explore unchambered recesses of her nurtured brain/child (brainchild) -- her brain the most nurtured, well-fed, healthy - she stretches possibility into still ever possibility. There are no limits. She can do anything.

She pleases him, and this pleases her. Here from darkness crawls out this lonely myopia and it's for her, it's because of her. She has accomplished, she has achieved. He's childlike, now, begs her to laugh, to share with him the joy she's offered him, to sample some of the light illumining his shadowed life. She bites her lip, counts ceiling tiles. 64, at least. She won't let her guard down, not now, not ever. She will prevail. She will not surrender. ("Oh, God, some god somewhere, Oh, God, he's adorable. Oh, damn, oh no, oh dear, oh shit. Not now, please. Patience is a virtue; nutmeg is a spice. 65. 66. 67.")

[The Truth is Out There.]

"I strongly recommend that you not trust me, Mr. Mulder. I will disappoint you. I am not of your species, not of your singlemindly devotion. I will not bow to you, I will not break. There are rules to be followed now, protocol, Mr. Mulder. Stay away from me. I will ruin you." It was on her "to do" list, circled red on her blotter. Remember to warn him. But too many night-noons between, she couldn't. Like the dutiful student, crushing on the piano teacher, practicing scales up, down, he was perfecting his strength. He was perfecting his smile (Oh, god!). Amino acid to protein, fish to frog, ape to man: science comprehends his change. Which makes it hers (possessive, belonging, singular responsibility) for pride of accomplishment. Another satisfied customer, something like that. "You are being selfish, Dana," she chastised herself. She wished she were a better liar.

[Samantha.]

There is a girl who has been set down somewhere and misplaced.

Fodder for an Oedipal field-day (picnic, ants, mirrored sunglasses, nibbled bits of chicken bone, "if there's an iced tea in that bag, could be love...") he retreats to a her-less lost, a lost of smacking, smarmy hypersexuality, a body awareness of blood that can only come from a blood lost. He craves blood. She scares him, science-woman, her stauch stolid lines, her readiness to conflict, her rise to challenge. She is tiny. She faces him head on. In a vampirish act of blood-craving he tells her all, he shares his bloodloss in the warm space of her safe, bounded science. He appreciates the vastness of safe, he promises not to betray it. He swears to himself, on that day, from that day forward, she-science-woman will never leave safe. He will shoulder the real of unsafe misplace for her.

For the girl who has been set down, lost, taken from him.

It will not happen again.

["What if I knew the potential consequences...but I never told her?"]

"Listen, children, to a story that was written long ago about a kingdom on a mountain, and the valley folk below. On the mountain was a treasure buried deep beneath the stone and the valley people swore they'd have it for their very own. So go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven: you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day. And on the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away."

In her insistent, inimitable (oh, god!) faith of science, she refused his warnings. Or perhaps (he digs his nails into his palm, looking around for someone to hit) he, in his insistent, idiotic faith of faith he failed to warn her. And she has been taken from him. Again. The science-woman of safe, the first, the her of returning echo ("Mulder, it's me."), his heart aches for the truth of her safe familiar. He wanted to believe ("I want to believe!") so badly that her everything/anything potential of strength was truth that he refused to allow her the scare of lonely lost. He wanted currency exchange, fair cash on the nail for his own cashed-in harbored loss of the girl so long ago taken. She-science-woman could have convinced him. She was inches from it, too close, him reeling in the bitter hurricane of her calm uprooting, her calmly uprooting, proving, the proof he needed. He wanted to believe.

She with comfort in her already-beliefs, she convinced of her conviction, the unlikely of playing fair, of rules, of protocol, she wanted him to believe. She would not bow. She would not break.

How close was she? he wonders now, looking for someone to hit. She, gaily hiding her grin behind her gun, she so ready for any of 67 possible evils, for any of at least 67 possible, countable ceiling-tiles to collapse stood vigil. Stood guard with surety over his ephemeral, uncountable lost. How close was she? he wonders now, counting ceiling tiles.

To a kingdom, on a mountain, she was taken from him.

["3"]

With the awareness of a blood that can only come from blood-lost, he craves blood. Missing so horribly the she of body-science he sought home's pain-anger of sex. More now, everybody on three, let's make sure we haven't missed anything. One, two, three. Sex. Sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex. "Expected something a little more poetic, didn't you, Mulder? A little more ephemeral. More incredible?" Instead, lost time drowns in sticky putrescence, blood and fluids, sensual vile smacking of bodies on bodies, a truth forgotten. "Expected something a little more...paranormal?" Physical truth of flesh imperfect, bodies smacking on bodies, sliding moist sweat and blood, imperfect. Nonmagical. But with the faith of her faith burning his imperfect body, branding him, now, then, always, he knew too late, appreciated the truth of bodies. The flawed and honest truth of wet science. Biology: The Study of Life.

Burned branded he has only one question now: the Science Messiah is dying. Its brainchild soul has been (surgically, scientifically) removed, its body burned understands the ineffable truth of body. He has only one question: why now, the Science Messiah on its deathbed, does the two of truth become 3?

["I had the strength of your beliefs."]

The Science Messiah is dying.

In the Museum of Fine Art in Philadelphia they keep their collection of medieval suits of armor suspended seven feet off the ground, encased in plexiglass. Armor, historic overweight overwear, banged-dented toxic heavy lead, zipped-up sardine-can encasement built to protect my love, my soul, my good man in battle. He trains himself to fight, to maneuver his form not wholly his own, to negotiate, navigate, operate under seventy pounds of protection. Drag. The lead-heavy extra weight, the handicap, the teaching-seeking of priority, the "is it worth it" of valor-crusade, of life-struggle. Is it worth it, all this extra weight? Is it worth it, this weight of promised security, the sacrifice made in singular speed, in litheness, in exchange for the toxic-heavy lead of sworn security? Is it worth it?

In the Museum of Fine Art in Philadelphia they keep these sworn-security-suits suspended seven feet off the ground, encased in plexiglass. Lies. False promises of safe, that surety myth revealed centuries too late, martyr-blood spilled, stained, vanished/been vanished. What protected the human machine centuries ago now stands vulnerable, dependent on the man-machine-plexiglass to protect it, not from battle-hungry human-machine-animals, not from life-crusade, from honor, but from sticky-fingered tourists.

The lies are exposed. The enemy is identified, too late. The protection will not protect.

The Science Messiah, before he/she was ever identified as such, has been exposed as vulnerable. The armor will not protect. The safe unravels into pretty lies; the armor is stripped, packed away.

She-science returns battle-scarred; the armor did not protect. The leap from death to now-life dependent not on the false truths of lying armor -- the faith of science so dearly protected until now, now exposed - but on the incredible truths of unbelief, of his belief, of a belief she suspects in periphery, she squints straight-on. Somewhere, seven feet below her now, the ground hisses, sizzles, peels away. Somewhere, seven feet below, the new enemy wings away anonymous.

["Trust no one."]

From bleachers the puppet-masters wonder how they tolerate one another. "Why does he stay?" they inquire, suspicious of contrivance, of the sleight-of-hand of misdirection. "She doesn't believe, she is unconvinced, she is chariot-horse blindsided to our worldly dark truths." "He does not let that stop him," twirl of cigarette smoke replies. "He believes enough for two." "For two billion!" the scratchman scoffs. "He ignores her reason. Why does _she_ stay?" "Yes, why," the smoke-ribbon traces the ceiling. "He has brought her to a dark place, a mountaintop for sacrifice. He has sacrificed her unwitting. Her life is gone in a whisper, replaced by what-could-be-no-more-unfathomable-fear, the worst possible: a life for herself that she herself does not believe."

Uncomfortable shifting, seated, they mark the moment of near-remorse, pondering those worthy of the greatest respect, those who would expose them. They mark the moment with a smoker's cough, uncomfortable shifting silence.

"Because they are partnered. Because they have interlocked, parts fused, irreversable deadbolt locked together. He struggles for the question only she can form, her words rising lifted incongruously from her known truth to his unknown. She narrates. For her, she pushes at the corners, stretches her limits, seeks challenge for valor, valor for personal acceptance. Answers: her sustenance. And his search provides the challenge of valor unlikely, unlikened by anything on her true-ground-truth. He is the dark of mystery, the call to answer, to solve."

Shifting they look to see who has spoken.

"They are together unstoppable," the voice cracks, breaks. Tears now at it, in the face of this power. At what will be their undoing.

[Truth, Part I]

Unsolicited he receives the hidden sonar call of evil. He pricks his ears for it, hears it in water draining, in the click-slam of a door, a phone, in the splash of mud-streaking cars on corners. He sniffs the fire-ash of evil in the wind, tastes it foreign in pesticide-fruit. He didn't ask for this ability, this power that bespeaks its own feeding fear, but he lives awake with it daily.

The homeland of the human animal is threatened, the animal sniffs the fire-ash, pricks his ears for evil. The ground shakes. The anticipatory truth of science-salvation is threatened, not by the inability of the human animal to draw conclusions, but by the baby-brother bratty resistance of conclusion, refusing to rise to the draw. The millenial well-wrought questions are moot, the billion-dollar budget practices descend into animate nostalgia. The best of the best, the brightest of the bright, the bred geniuses of science, of answers sought, the whirling whirlwind minds of logic gods (he generalizes, thinking of her) doomed to mediocrity not by virtue of their own inadequacy, but by the baby-brother bratty impossibility of truth to meet known language. To fit the billion-dollar projected patterns.

His homeland is threatened. The projected patterns no longer apply. The centuries-sensible strata of human understanding is spat upon by blurry external influence. Unfamiliar, uninvited, torn bonds of blood rejecting foreign blood. Alien.

And with it, terror, not just for him, not just for the girl who has been misplaced -- not just for the fearsome impossibilty of near-truth, for the aching vocabulary of alien, shaping olympic-slow, and not just for humankind, threatened by a displace misplace of other, of impossibility sneaking in out of phase - but for she-science-woman, she of answers. Her truths untruthed, her life dangles like bad grammar.

Long past half-ditch efforts to shut out the sounds, he embraces them now. He will chase it, life-crusading for these impossible answers; he will chase it, violent and terrified till death, for death, in the mocking face of death. He will chase it, he crusades, and he will find it, defeat it. For the she of science, for the she who has been misplaced. He will chase it down. Nothing vanishes without a trace.

[Truth, Part II]

Outside faith, windows shut, curtains drawn, shivering terrified the storm hollers baby-brother bratty for attention. She distracts herself by counting, then distracts herself with accusatory discourse for her unnecessary distraction.

She is aware, now, that there is indeed a truth for which she has no words. There is an unspeakable evil, a homeland-threatening animal evil that insists on anonymity, and that is Just Not Okay. It is unacceptable, and she will not accept it (she flicks the safety on her weapon with human-animal instinct: where did that come from?), she has with her the power of two centuries of science-learning, the vocabulary, the names, the stiletto weapon of true names.

She will join the crusade because it needs her (because he does?), because she has to offer what two centuries of science-learning did not. He will chase it, he will bear down upon it and it will grin toothy, grin because he does not have its essence, he does not have a finger on its life-pulse.

And (she sighs, her destiny, life till death, for death, in the mocking face of death unfolding irrefutable) she will be there. And she will wield the weapon only she can provide, when she is prepared, when the answers have clicked into place.

She will stand above it, laughing. And she will call out the true name of god.

["Scully, take a look at this."]

She's not answering her phone and he's impatient; he careens in rain, throws himself wet at her door. Any modicum of dignity he left behind when she abandoned herself unknowingly to him; he has become absurd. He tests the joke, rolls it around on his tongue, flicks sunflower shells to the floor. He has become absurd, unreal, incredible, unbelievable. A Barnum-worthy sucker gimmick, born not every minute but once in fifty years: a rare gem. He slides to her door, wet, he needs her, he's not sure why but he needs her, he needs her, he has visions unformed, theories unvocalized, hypotheses ineffable without her word-math, without her template of tempering ingenuity. Her invaluable insight. He slides to her door, rakes slender busy fingers through his hair, last ditch unconscious effort at presentability for her benefit. He knocks.

She has turned her back on him, not metaphorically but physically, and he blesses the moment's pause. He suspects the truth - that she is hiding her smile - but there are more important things to think about now.

Danger there is danger remember there is danger there is danger remember there is danger. He knows she won't believe him, knows she'll challenge him to impossible conclusions, knows her idea of likely is the least such. But he shows her anyway, shows her with the hope of likely and the hope of safe, shows her with the selfish need to access that shocking, logical mind. What to her is cows, Roanoke, date rape, to him is humanity crying infantile. What to her is blood, science, to him is humanity aching for salvation. What to her is likely cruel agenda, simple science, the snap of handcuffs, the cool of bars is to him the toothy grin of evil, humanity sacrificed with blood for tainted blood.

There is evil. And there are also cows.

She kicks off her shoe to a knock at the door and it's him, she knows. She tightens her jaw against his effusion, she steels herself for science-battle against his will to spectacle, spectacular. He breezes in damp with his own teapot-tempest and she bites her lip, counts ceiling tiles against his charming will, his pep-rally call to damnation, three cheers! Never before, never before him did that phrase take on so much meaning, that phrase packed with a hidden smile, the never-exposed admission that he is captivating, he is convincing. His charm is inseparable from his fear and she resists both, both terrify her. His truth is passion, danger, danger of passion and the unlikely likelihood of extrascience. But the phrase rolls in again as he splatters rainwater on her carpet, sits down. She mouths it to herself, fighting the smile-fear. "Against her better judgment."

["You're my one in five billion."]

It is the wrong time, absolutely the wrong time to idly note her sensible shoes. The wrong time to think that it's his influence, his insistence of danger there is danger remember there is danger that kicked off her office-heels and strapped her into rubber-soled boots. As if she's ready, finally, to run for it, run for her life, run FOR her life, in order to maintain her life, in order to attain a life, in order to save her life, her life now, her life with him, her life finally valuable, valuable as the forgotten one abandoned when he tricked her here, when he drew her here. Strapped into boots ready to serve and protect, solemn unlikely admission of her refused belief, but he notes, as he shoulder-holsters his own weapon that she's chosen sensible shoes, that she's jersey-knit ready to sweat, that her weapon is accessible, her watch face turned to the inside of her wrist, protected. Her face is steeled, her life only as valuable to her now as that which it represents, the still strength of her frame only as steely as the conviction which drives her, now, to fight. He watches her unwaveringly prepare, a vacuum-conviction on faith alone, a faith unequaled even by his, a faith so bloody and human it terrifies him. She will seek the answers, she will kill for them. She will, he realizes, kill for him. To protect, to expose. To at last earthly comprehend, comprehend in a way only her capacious brain can, the name of evil. He follows in the shadow of her coiled fury, her tiny frame striding long steps toward that unknown dark. Unafraid.

It is the wrong time to notice that in this dark-terror illumine, she is awesome.

["Shut up, Mulder, I'm playing baseball."]

She is proud of herself, but she would never tell him that. She is proud of him, of how he's grown, of how they've grown together, but she only smiles once the door is closed between them and the privacy of her walls, her ceiling, her paperwork and sensible shoes won't betray her.

The truth is out there, the truth is in her. The truth, huge and dark and terrifying kept her by his side one too many nights, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists white and long ago they past the point of no return. And before it was about the truth, about the righteousness of right, but now she stays for other reasons. Because his touch sends her trembling, but she would never tell him that. Because it is too huge, and too dark, and too terrifying to go alone. "And the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you could ever imagine yourself with."

She is past the point of rescue, and she doesn't need rescuing. She wants to be out there, with him, alone together, hiding laughing in the dark.

She wanted to be bested; she is bested. She wanted to be challenged; she is challenged. She wanted to be loved, and dominated, and trusted and admired, and she is all of these things and more.

And with the thwack of the baseball bat singing freedom to the stars, with her soul and body liberated by his touch, by his inimitable indomitable power, by his unabashed love for her, she laughs out loud in the mocking face of death. It's on hold, tonight, the world is on hold, the dark and the terror are stilled in the sticky mud and stars and fresh-laid grass she wants to dance. She wants to hold him, and dance, and sing out god damnit I have never been more alive!

But she would never tell him that.

To Be Continued.


End file.
